Not long ago, a downtown Seattle intersection at Second and Virginia, over the period of a few hours, gave me the experience of a pedestrian squeezing along at the edge of moving traffic, followed by a driver’s perspective confronting folks forced to walk in the street. It was eye-opening but not fun. The experience is […]
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The Seattle City Council has voted 6-3 to repeal an ordinance it adopted last March that limited ride-share companies, including Lyft, Sidecar and UberX to 150 active drivers apiece. The action clears the way, next Monday, for adoption of a new set of regulations worked out by Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, after ride-share operators had […]
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Seattle City Light Superintendent Jorge Carrasco has issued an abject apology over recent “mistakes,” including the theft of copper wire from the utility, as well as inept handling of a recent, pending, substantial increase in his $245,000-a-year salary. “For all of these issues, I want to apologize to the people of Seattle, the City Council, […]
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Mayor Ed Murray announced Wednesday that Seattle City Light Superintendent Jorge Carrasco will not be getting a pay raise, despite a recent Seattle City Council vote to increase Carrasco’s $245,000 salary into the $300,000-plus range. “I am not going to raise the superintendent’s salary,” said Murray. Murray at once defended City Light’s performance, voiced […]
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The joyous Sunday dedication of Seattle’s new $134 million South Park Bridge contrasted with a different form of dedication four years ago as the old 79-yearold bridge was being permanently closed to traffic. About 150 residents of the South Park neighborhood stood outside with signs in a driving rain storm, as Democratic luminaries arrived […]
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Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole took office Monday with high ceremony and a down-to-earth promise to a city which, six months ago, she “never imagined” calling home. “We will succeed in rebuilding public trust, and rebuilding departmental pride and respect” as well as enacting a reform agenda decreed by the U.S. Justice Department, the […]
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“Seattle’s finest” police officers are “demoralized” by ongoing controversy and “afraid to engage” the community out of apprehension over the reaction they will get, Seattle Police Chief-designate Kathleen O’Toole told a City Council hearing in Southeast Seattle on Wednesday night. “They’re afraid to do anything because of all the scrutiny,” said O’Toole, who is almost […]
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Using a big-name Washington, D.C., lawyer who defended the federal Defense of Marriage Act at the U.S. Supreme Court, the International Franchise Association is suing in U.S. District Court to block Seattle’s recently enacted $15-an-hour minimum wage law. The D.C.-based lobby group argues that the city’s new “living wage” law violates both the equal protection […]
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Seattle has always craved national news recognition, whether it’s for architecture of the Seattle Downtown Library or radical politics that once caused Franklin D. Roosevelt’s political strategist James Farley to say there were “47 states in the Union and the Soviet republic of Washington.” The city’s bold jump to a $15-an-hour minimum wage is getting […]
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